


Gods' End

by Amielleon



Category: Fire Emblem, Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: M/M, Retelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-22
Updated: 2011-07-22
Packaged: 2017-11-10 13:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/466745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amielleon/pseuds/Amielleon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Soren-centric retelling of Radiant Dawn in the spirit of Ep. 10 of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gods' End

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Some graphic imagery.
> 
> Originally posted [here](http://amielleon.dreamwidth.org/21421.html) over a year ago. People seemed to like it, and I've decided I like it myself and I don't want it to just exist buried under everything else in my journal. This is a mildly edited version, posted here on July 23rd 2012. ~~Consider this the first anniversary edition.~~

The first time, the beorc and the laguz fell to Ashera.

Soren did not try to save himself, staying by Ike's corpse as the tower crumbled around him. He was thin and Ike was broad but still he draped himself over him as if he could save a dead man from wayward beams and a long fall. Ashera had risen through the roof of the tower, up into the air to level the ground and reinvent the world anew. Soren might have been screaming because he was _still here_ , he was alive, he existed too, he _existed_ , he didn't want to stop existing right then without even death – or he might have been screaming because the world had already ended, right there in the stillness beneath his arms.

Right there he felt Ike turn to stone and then to ash, and then the ceiling battering him senseless if he had any sense to lose, and then nothing at all.

 _Nothing_ had been a long time coming. Fitting, that his borrowed life would end with the one who had given it to him.

“I'm dead, then,” he murmured to himself.

“No, not dead.” Head cocked, a girl hovered before him, colored in blue ethereal tones like those that swam around the edges of Ashera's form. “You're definitely alive. That's why I came to you.”

Soren stared at the girl. The girl stared back and smiled. “What are you smiling about?” 

The girl stopped smiling. “I was happy. I thought you could help me.”

“I don't want to help you. Leave me.”

She half-turned, scuffed the blank air with one foot in a way that looked slightly ridiculous, and murmured, “Well, I was going to help you and your meaty hero, but if you're going to be like that....” She looked at Soren.

He relented, “I'm listening.”

She beamed a smile at him. “Now, Ashera's gone and erased practically the whole world without even telling me. That's really unfair, you know. It was my world, too. I think someone out there agrees with me! So – when I woke up, I felt this power....”

She paused. Soren looked about them, at the flat land far below him and oceans at peace for miles and miles in the distance, at the tall goddess's back in the distant sky, frozen.

“I think I can give us another chance. I can erase a little history. ... But I'll be asleep then.” She looked at Soren meaningfully.

“You want me to rewrite history.”

“Yes! You'll need me with you.” She frowned disapprovingly. “You know how things turn out. Don't try so hard to kill Micaiah this time. You can't do this without us.”

Soren opened his mouth to ask what that fanatic Daein general had to do with anything when the girl-spirit decided she had said enough, and he fell through a tunnel, edges shining like glass.

The sun. The sun odiously bright on the top of his tent. Soren pulled himself from his pallet and marveled at the tent, at the blanket, at his hands. He peered outside at the campsite, set in a rich Gallian forest with beautiful gray-blue mountains in the distance.

Ike waved at him. “It's not like you to sleep in.”

“... I've had a lot to do lately.”

~-*-~

It wasn't that difficult to feign incompetence. Often the laguz generals did all the work for him. Suggest a few perfectly sensible plans outside of their moral comfort and they hindered themselves for him.

“Leave her to me!” he ordered, his hair sticking to the swamp muck on his cheek as he waded across – to protect her, did she know, could she possibly know? No, not to protect her. Her life was a means to an end.

When he met her face to face he felt the essence of her blood about her. They locked eyes and she froze at the sight of him. “That explains quite a bit,” he murmured, mostly to himself.

“Who are you?” she called to him, hopeful, almost friendly. “You're ... you're just like me!”

“They call us the Branded,” he said. He recalled the crumbling tower, the dead all around him and himself untouched, unfit to be even struck down, a thing that never existed and could cease to exist at any moment. “As time passes, I understand better and better how others see us.” With one hand creasing the binding of his wind tome, he stared this silly girl down, this little Branded girl whose death cost him Ike.

“You're so cold,” she murmured, drawing her own tome from beneath her arm. “And yet – I sense a warm core trying to melt through. There's someone you cherish very much....”

As wind whipped furious about him, he reminded himself that his mission was to keep her alive.

~-*-~

Most of the army considered Soren to be analytical and impassive to a fault, which was why no one understood when he knocked over his chair at the news of General Micaiah's death.

“Daein's own General killed her?” he thundered. “General Tauroneo?!”

“Soren, isn't this good news? They might let us through without a fight, and the less battles we have –”

Soren buried his face in his hands and took a few angry breaths. Everyone watched. “Ike, I want – I want to see you tonight to discuss how this changes our strategy for the Greil Mercenaries unit. I'll meet with the rest of you at another time.” He stormed out of the room.

~-*-~

“We have to run,” he murmured, his red eyes flickering from tent opening to unlit shadow for any sign of an eavesdropper. “We can't do this without her. That Daein general.”

“Why not?”

“Trust me, Ike,” Soren pleaded, not commanded. “This war won't go on much longer. Ash– The Dark God will wake from the medallion. I've – received credible intelligence on that. The chances are near-certain. We can't end this war in time. We need to leave Tellius. Now. If we were far away from the tower, maybe her power can't reach –”

Ike slowly shook his head throughout. “I can't leave everyone behind, Soren. Medallion or not, I'm fighting to the last.”

A wasted effort. What had he done wrong? What could he do? He thought about the shaft of light that Ashera struck him down with, just one sent right through his heart –

“Trust me, Soren.” Ike's hands were there, one on each shoulder, warm and firm. “I'm not going to lose.” Soren couldn't help himself then, and as he cried against Ike's chest (his second time; Ike's first), the bump of a belt uncomfortably against one cheek. He thought to himself that if the world were to end he might as well gratify himself for all the lost time he had regretted before. He let his hands creep along Ike's warm sides and let one wet eyelash glide against Ike's jaw as he laid a kiss against his throat, and Ike was surprised at first but soon after responsive, just like Soren knew he would be.

~-*-~

“Strike me down!” he screamed at her, hands not on his tome but the body by his side. “I am just as guilty of war!” The goddess never reacted, floating upward into the sky, the tower rumbling as before – “ _So kill me!_ Do it!” Corpse to stone to ash, and Soren was too tired to weep. Tower to stone to air.

The girl again.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“Tell me,” he said, voice tired and devoid of passion. “Is there any chance?”

She nodded. “I'm sorry. I should've protected her. I didn't think she'd do that.” 

“Is this a game to you?” Soren turned himself about in the air, stretching himself to look as big as he could. “We can always do this again. Is that what you think?”

The girl shook her head. “No! Not at all. I made a mistake. I... I'm sorry. I've made a lot of mistakes.” Soren crossed his arms. “I know what to do now. Won't you trust me?”

“What choice do I have?”

The crystal tunnel. The sun on his tent roof.

* * *

By some freak chance – not chance, but his own tired inattentiveness, or his impatient carelessness, confounded further by the cloak of night – they were alerted to the presence of the pegasus rider too late. Soren felt snow creeping into his boots as he abruptly turned around to watch Mist fall. From beside him, Ike roared something – her name? denial? – and turned to run to her side. “Ike! Watch out!” he warned, sending a blast of air toward a dark mage that aimed at Ike's unguarded back. It ignored him, raising its hands and drawing shadows from the air. “Ike!”

When the magic struck Ike with full force, he grimaced and turned back to face his opponent, felling him with two shocks from Ragnell. He didn't reply, didn't bellow any more or cry, but Soren could tell with his curt strokes that he was grieving, just like the reckless way he fought at the Gallian fort the cloudy morning after Greil died.

Soren watched closely over him, to keep him from his own careless unconscious self-destruction. His world could continue without Mist. But Ike, as selfless as he was, must live.

~-*-~

“So your name is Yune.” In the shadow of the Tower of Guidance, he pulled a vulnerary from his satchel and dispassionately passed one to the silver-haired girl.

“Yup! I thought you'd never ask.” She tucked the vulnerary into her red robes and beamed a smile that looked strange on the apostle's face.

“This time,” he said, “I intend for you to keep your promises.”

~-*-~

“Ike,” he said, his throat hoarse with emotion. It was the third time but he still felt chills swim through him as he said, “About that, do you...?”

Ike looked at him with such guilty blue eyes – Soren loved that even as he wanted to reassure him that he'd forgiven him in an instant – and said, “I'd forgotten before. There's no excuse for that.

“I remember now. All of it.”

Not all of it, not the two times he'd died and Soren had wept and struggled for him, the months from Daein to the tower when Soren had been as shamelessly blunt as Ike and it was well-known but unstated that they were as good as married, shameless because the world would soon end.

When he thought about the edge of the forest in a little Gallian village and that first sparing kindness, it was still enough to move him and soak up Ike's embrace just in case everything would go wrong yet again.

~-*-~

He wasn't watching when Ike struck the final blow, busy instead with the ward staff angled toward him, his eyes closed in concentration. He heard the gentle swish of god-dust sprinkling against the hard floor, opened his eyes, and the deed was done.

Ike lowered his sword, took a step, faltered, and began to fall. In a moment, Soren rushed toward him, but he was repulsed as a torrent of blue energy left Ike's body and took its place on Ashera's former pedestal.

“Yune,” Soren acknowledged once, coldly, bending over Ike's form and placing his hand before Ike's nose, against his neck. He was relieved to all signs of life in order, and forgetting their audience, sought out Ike's hand in relief.

The tower rumbled. “I think I might've messed up again,” she said quietly.

~-*-~

“What makes you think I'll help you?”

“I'm so sorry. I didn't think... I thought the world would be all right without her.”

“It's impossible, then. We can't defeat her _and_ spare her.”

“I hope not. I like you all. Even you, Soren.” Yune looked genuinely downcast as she stared down at herself, the frills on her spirit-dress, the round tips of her boots. “I think... there should... there should be a way.” Soren held his knees to his chest, watching the world beneath him, a near-perfect sphere of ruin centering about the Tower of Guidance, dust clouds frozen at its border in a neat ring.

Somewhere in its center was a man buried under layers of stone, eyes wide open in shock at his unavoidable fate, still open in death as the stone found him soft and malleable. Did he wonder, as the ceiling crushed him, why the one closest to him wasn't by his side?

At last he said, “Then I won't give up.”

* * *

“Ike. You trust me, don't you?”

“Yeah?”

“You'll believe me. No matter how crazy it sounds. What I'm about to say.”

“Sure. What is it, Soren?”

Soren nodded to himself and gazed out over the fire, he and Ike both shades of orange-grey in the low light. Another campfire. The last two years in time of mind had been war for him, endless war, the same tides over and over again. “It's...” – where to start? – “I've been through this war already. Three times.” Ike's eyebrows curved in confusion. “It's not a metaphor.”

“I don't see how it'd be a metaphor.”

Soren shook his head, a small amused smile tickling at his lips despite himself. “It's hard to explain. One of the goddesses turned back time for me.” Ike gave an intrigued grunt. “This war hasn't turned out well. Not once.”

Ike stared silently into the campfire, and Soren followed suit, trying to think of what to say next. What could they do this time that was different from any other? Could Ike save them, knowing this? Or would it simply be reason for another few months of passionate openness before, again, his death in the tower and an erasure of everything Ike had grown to feel toward Soren and nothing that Soren felt toward Ike. Finally Ike spoke, saying, “You're from the future, Soren?” Soren gave a hum of confirmation. “And ... you turned back time? Because we lost?”

“Everyone lost,” he said. “The world was at an end.” It wasn't the reason he agreed to this, years thrown endlessly into the fire. But the world was what mattered to Ike.

“The dark god.”

“Not exactly. But it was because the god in the medallion woke.” Another ripple of confusion passed across Ike's face. Soren tilted his head, sweat-matted hair irritating his cheek as he said, “You believe me?”

“Of course.”

“I said I'm a time traveler, Ike.”

“And a dark god trapped in a trinket drove my father insane. Look, things happen. I'm beyond being surprised. I trust you.”

Soren nodded to himself, eyes averted, stealing a glance at Ike's calloused hands carelessly placed on the log he sat on. They moved slightly, in some undefinable way – with muscles keeping balance, perhaps, or the pulse running under his skin.

“So... what's the plan, Soren?”

He brought his gaze up to meet Ike's. “I'm... I'm still thinking.” Without looking, he reached over, his fingers glancing across mossy bark as they found Ike's hand. “I promise. I promise I'll save you, like you saved me.”

Ike let him take his hand, saying in his confident, mood-lifting way, “Thanks – but you don't owe me for watching your back, Soren. That's something we all do for each other.”

Soren shook his head and squeezed that large, warm hand. “No, it's not that.... You'll remember later, Ike.”

They held hands. Soren turned his oath over and over in his mind.

~-*-~

“We'll seal her,” Soren said. Yune stared at him with ruby eyes eerily like his own, pouting like a hurt little girl. “It's necessary. If we can't destroy her, we'll have to cage her.”

“We shouldn't do that to her,” she said pleadingly, crossing her arms across her chest. “She's only gotten this way because she's been alone. It's so awful, being caged away. It'll only make things worse.... Hey!”

He'd reached out and grabbed her, pinning her against the golden side of the tower. “It's _mean_? Cruel? I don't care. We can't afford to feel sorry for her. You didn't seem to mind when we killed her.”

“She was part of me,” Yune said in a small voice, squirming a little in Soren's grip. “She's not evil. It's one thing to stop existing, but – she doesn't deserve something like that. Maybe if we talked....”

“Have you been watching? She's destroyed all of Tellius. Twice!” Soren gave Yune's form one last shove as he stepped away. “We don't have the luxury of mercy.”

Soren turned, and was surprised when a furious girl seized him from behind. “I'm trying hard too! Listen to what _I_ want, just once! I didn't have to choose you!”

“Then let me die with Ike!” Soren snapped, shrugging off her hands. “Dangle the world before someone else.”

As he walked away, she said, “You can't seal her. You don't have the power to, without my help.”

“You'd bring us all the way here to fail?”

“Maybe I don't want to just help your hero live. Have you thought about that?”

~-*-~

She was a goddess. Soren had grown too bold. Ashera was a goddess. Without Yune's blessing, they were insects. Constructs of flesh. Corruptible forms of meat. They lasted only seconds above the first floor of the tower before the beorc and laguz started to become undone.

That was the graceful name Dheginsea gave it, as his dragons stepped back and left them to their rotting. Feathers and hair falling to the floor, skin bubbling, muscles softening and deforming.

Among them, Ike had a stronger spirit. He watched Mist and Rolf and all their companions melt before his vision succumbed. Soren watched Ike's uncreation, and it drove away any thoughts for the others.

Ike stopped writhing. It took all his energy to breathe. Soren fought for control of his voice, failed, and took a dagger from his belt, his body quivering as he wept. He turned Ike's head gently to one side. One firm strike to the back of the head and Ike was no longer in pain. With a guttural wail, he brought the tip of the dagger to the center of his chest –

A little orange bird knocked the dagger from his shaky hands. Yune reappeared, blue spirit-flame, looking down at the mangled body between them. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean....” Soren didn't have the breath to curse her, scream at her, plead with her. He stared at his hands, spattered with blood and dirt and brain, his dagger absent. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have just abandoned you all.” Ike's flesh quivering and melting. “I was angry. I should've tried to talk to you.” Seeping into the cracks between the perfect square floor tiles. Fates worse than death, flashing through Soren's mind. “I've just ruined everything again. Maybe if I were stronger, I could take us back, all the way to my first mistake....” She knelt by what had been Ike's corpse. “You loved him, didn't you? I'm sorry. He didn't deserve that.” 

Soren grabbed the dagger from the floor with surreal speed and flung it at Yune's form. It sailed through her without even causing her spirit to wisp like smoke, clattering against the cold stone. “I'm sorry! I really am. There might be a way, maybe, that's sort of like sealing her.... Do you... want to try again?” Soren shook his head vigorously, burying his fingers in his hair and his face in his arms. “It's my fault! All right?” She leaned across the floor to lay her intangible hands on Soren's shoulders, her voice losing its characteristic enthusiasm. “It's always been my fault. I just – I don't want to make her live a life worse than death. That's all. I still, I still want to defeat her. I love people, and I, I don't want to be alone.”

 _Why do you want my company? What could it be worth? Leave me alone. I don't want to watch this anymore. I can't watch this again._ Soren shook his head between his arms.

“Please. The swordsman wouldn't help me. No one else can help me like you. If you give up, this is how things will be forever.”

 _Ike_ was on his lips.

“I don't want that. And... you can't want that... do you?”

“No,” he forced from his throat, high-pitched and strangled.

~-*-~

It was like waking from a nightmare. The sun on the tent hurt his eyes, but he stared at the tent roof anyway, willing the sun to burn away the image of Ike slowly melting.

Eventually, he lifted himself from his pallet and donned his robes with apathetic motions. He stepped out of his tent.

Ike was sharpening his sword, in the middle of a lively conversation with Oscar. At the sight of Soren, he waved. “Morning, Soren. It's not like you to sleep in.” Soren stared. Ike, alive, vibrant, strong. “... Soren? Are you okay?”

_Tell me. Am I alive? Are you alive? Am I going to wake up?_

“I'm fine,” he said.

* * *

In the fifth passing of the year 648, Soren lingered not after war meetings to speak with Ike. Rhys healed in the front lines while Soren himself stayed with the rearguard.

“I haven't seen you in awhile,” Ike remarked one day.

Soren gave him his cut of rations as quickly as possible, ignoring the quick brush of skin as he passed the hardtack. “We see each other every day,” he said calmly, which was the truth. He didn't mention that they haven't had a real conversation since they left Gallia – since time flowed again. They hadn't sat together at meals, dragged out briefings, sheltered each other in the battlefield.

He reasoned that if these months would also disappear into the intangible recesses of his memory, at least they would not bury another Ike that he loved. Maybe he would die so distantly that Soren could let the world end. (He fantasized over the thought of rest, but he knew he couldn't be content with Ike's death even if Ike shunned him.)

Soren found some comfort in the observation that no one took his place. Ike swam through a sea of family and soldiers, people he cared for and protected. No one from the masses of the adoring hovered by his side at the odd hours of the day like he did. Sometimes Soren wished that Ike would meddle with his plans and try to re-inject himself into Soren's life. At least that would prove that Ike wanted him there. Instead, Ike adjusted too well, and by the time they were in Daein, he didn't even remark on Soren's distance.

Surrounded and alone, Ike floated away from him. Soren told himself it was for the best.

~-*-~

“Soren! Psst, Soren, over here.”

Soren clutched the tome to his chest and raised an eyebrow. Yune, in possession of Micaiah's body, waved at him from underneath a snow-covered pine. He went to her, saying, “Yes? What is it?”

“I've been thinking about this,” she said, fiddling with the ends of one sleeve. “I was thinking, maybe we could be put back together again.” Soren looked on, interested and perhaps skeptical. “That way, nothing horrible has to happen.”

“You think nothing horrible has happened?” he said quietly with a bitter edge.

Yune shook her head, casting her eyes downward. “Not anymore, I mean. I want to fix things. So people can be happy again. Instead of doing this over and over....”

Soren turned back to her with an expression of curt indifference. “So,” he said. “You want us to rejoin you into Ashunera?” She nodded. “How?”

“Maybe Lehran,” she mumbled. “Lehran would help me.”

“I don't want to relive these months again on a 'maybe'.”

The tactician glowering, the goddess silent, they stood underneath the pine, two colored specks in the expanse of snow and forest-green. At last he decided on, _How confident are you that it's even possible to succeed?_ and opened his mouth when Yune said, “I think I'll ask your hero for help.” _Leave Ike out of this_ , said Soren's expression. “We've tried a lot by ourselves. Maybe he'll have a good idea. It couldn't hurt.”

“Fine. If you think he can come up with a way to fix this, by all means.”

“I think he should have a say in how he dies,” Yune said pointedly. Soren gritted his teeth and stared at her hard enough to send her gaze ducking down again. “I guess I'll go try talking to him.”

~-*-~

Despite his silence, Soren had kept watch over Ike from a distance and continued to do so after his consultation with Yune. He saw her take Ike aside while the Crimean knights were about to depart. They attracted no attention, perhaps supernaturally, as they slipped away between the pine trees. Masterful. It was baffling to him how one moment she could be so utterly childish, and then in the next, invoke her godhood.

A few nights later in the too-quiet forest, Ike approached Soren outside of their usual schedule, for what was the first time in weeks. (On the Daein border, Ike had lost his canteen and sought Soren out for a replacement.) “Hey, Soren. Yune told me some stuff about Ashera – have a moment?”

“Of course,” he murmured, careful to keep his eyes away from Ike's face.

So Ike spoke of time traveling and goddesses and four brutal deaths, casually like he'd heard a tall tale at a downtrodden inn about laguz setting the Mainal Cathedral aflame. Like the strange phrases he used didn't evoke a completely different counterpart in Soren's mind – so unlike the way Ike had understood before, by the campfire months ago. 

He concluded with, “So, is it true, Soren?”

“More or less,” in the same tone of voice. “Did she ask for a favor?”

“You could call it that.”

They were quiet for a bit, gliding through the forest and silencing the bugs as they passed. It was almost like normalcy, Soren thought tiredly, clasping his hands together before him to avoid any mistakes. Oh, what he would give to have that back. After a few minutes, Soren stopped expecting Ike to elaborate. He should have known that, pursuing this path, he would no longer be in Ike's confidence.

“Hey, Soren?”

“Mm? Yes, Ike?” For a moment his blood chilled at the thought of confessions and plans, goddesses and death –

“I forgot to give you this book. It's in my tent right now. Aimee gave it to me. Said it was powerful. Remind me at the briefing tomorrow if I forget to bring it.”

“Oh. Of course.”

Not even an invitation to come by his tent. That was for the better, he reminded himself.

~-*-~

“Ike knows what to do,” Yune said simply when Soren sought her out. “I think it really will work.”

“What's the plan?” Yune shook her head at him. “Tell me.”

“You already had four chances,” she said, crossing her arms and twisting Micaiah's face into a pout. “Let me try for once.”

“Your carelessness sabotaged the last four timelines,” he said – nearly snarled. “I wasn't the one who led us to failure.”

“And I don't owe you a thing.” Yune turned and called, “Sothe? Come back! Micaiah wants to talk to you~!” And with a whirl of blue energy and a flutter of golden eyes, that was the end of that conversation.

~-*-~

“We have to put an end to this.”

Soren could hear Micaiah's words from a distance away in the eerily silent stone room. Something in his gut twisted, and against all reason he ran for where Ike and Micaiah stood before the goddess, Ragnell raised.

“Take all the power I have.”

“We'll end this now.”

It only took one more cleave for Ashera to crumple into blue dust. This time, they did not disappear. A torrent of energy flew from Ike and coiled itself around Ashera's remains. For a moment, Ike faltered; then, regaining his strength, he turned around to his loyal army and said, “It's over. I won't be going back with you.”

Micaiah nodded once to Ike, took Sothe by the elbow, and walked away without comment; those formerly of the Dawn Brigade followed with questioning glances. The stoic laguz kings seemed to sense something – they wished him well, and turned back. Soren wondered briefly if he was the only one who thought that something was wrong.

“Ike. What do you mean?”

“It's hard to explain....”

The energy from the altar surged forth and returned to Ike. He gasped, leaning heavily on Ragnell; Soren flew forth, all other thoughts lost, but some force slammed him back against the cold stone ground. He landed oddly against his shoulder, his arm bruising where it shielded his head from the floor. Less than a second later he had crawled back to his feet to witness the entity that was and might still have been Ike.

Ike did not have red eyes, nor such an expression of serene adoration. Ike did not stand like that, or move like that...

“Ike?” 

“Ike is sleeping,” the blue-haired person said with the voice of a woman. He, or she, looked beyond Soren and tilted Ike's head to one side. “Please leave me alone with this one. I will see you later, I promise.” Glancing behind him, he caught sight of Lehran's slender form bowing once before joining the rest of the army through the double-doors.

“You're not Yune,” Soren said tentatively. Ike's face smiled encouragingly. “You're Ashunera, then.” She murmured her assent. “What are you doing with Ike?”

“Half of me has suffered defeat. Half of me has been asleep for centuries. I have not the strength yet to remain whole on my own. This one, Ike, has the resolve to keep me whole for the rest of his years, until I can exist by myself.”

_No. He's mine. He keeps me whole. You can't take him. It's not fair. Make your heron come back. He can be your vessel._

“Ike has a very strong life force,” she said, as if she had heard his thoughts. “I know no others alive who could perform this task.”

“We'll find them.” Soren's voice returned to the commanding pitch it had taken with Yune. “We'll go back, and...”

“No.” A single syllable, stopping his desperate speech right there. “I think it has transpired as well as it could.”

_This? This is the best that things can be?_

“He has awakened. He would like to talk to you.” In that uncanny way that Soren had seen in Micaiah many times before – but for the first time on the face of Ike, whose every expression he thought he knew – Ike's expression went blank for a moment before all the right muscles pulled his eyebrows and mouth back into a terse almost-frown.

“Soren,” he said in the right voice, not unhappily, “it's all right.”

All of a sudden, lost months building into lost years, the confession he'd made many times before but not this time, Ike's death that he had seen so many times – it welled up and broke his composure and restraint, his false imitation of authority and power. “How can you say that?! Do you even know – all this time – I've been trying to save you and now, now you're just, now you're going to spend the rest of your life as a – _body_?”

“Soren,” he said again, this time in that tone of voice that he always used when Soren was distraught and he was a little sympathetic, a little exasperated. “Soren, I know. When Ashunera moved in, I got a glimpse of everything that happened before. All those times you tried to make things work. All the time we spent together.”

“You know, then,” Soren said, very low and quiet, “why I can't watch you leave.”

Ike shook his head as he stepped down from the altar and across the room, his footsteps hauntingly familiar. “Soren... you're amazing, you know? You did all that for my sake. You've done so much for me. It's only because you've tried all those months that we could save Tellius now. ... You're strong, Soren.” With those words, Ike clasped a hand on Soren's shoulder, and he could no longer hold back his tears.

“It's _because_ it was for you,” he choked out, “because I wanted, I wanted to be with you, but this way....”

He found his cheek pressed against a buckle on Ike's leather armor again, and he wrapped his arms about Ike's chest and breathed his musk and thought as hard as he could of the look of the sunlight on the tent roof – 

Ike's voice came through: “I don't like it either, but it's something I need to do. ... I won't forget you, you know? I can see what Ashunera can see now. I'll be watching.”

Soren opened his eyes. “What ... good is that if I can never see you again?” He curled his fingers against the hard leather.

Ike shook his head, searching for a thought. “I'll still be with you. With any luck, it might be for the rest of your life. Hey...” He momentarily pulled back. With a few quick motions he untied his red headband and held it toward Soren. Hesitantly, Soren cupped his hands and watched as the cloth fell into a neat little bundle. “Here. Just...”

“Don't go,” Soren weakly protested.

Ike laid a quick peck on the top of Soren's head, smiled, and gazed at him with serene ruby eyes as Soren's consciousness slipped away.

* * *

The goddess of dawn awoke like a child, blinking sleep away with fussy irritation. “Mmm. How long has it been?”

“Not long. Only five years since you fell asleep.”

At the voice – not Lehran's humble tenor – she awoke, rising to greet her guest. “It was a nice nap. How have you been?”

“I'm fine.” He was tall and sturdy in stature, with few wisps of green-black hair left adorning his head and jaw. Ashunera thought to herself that his eyes, although changed with reserved wisdom, still held something of that intense gleam from over a millennium ago. “And you?”

“I was speaking with him just before I woke,” she said, smiling and pattering barefoot to the old sage. “I made sure to keep our promises.”


End file.
